As any healer who has spent any amount of time healing at level 85 may know, everything is always all about your mana bar. More specifically, it is how your mana bar bleeds as you work to keep your group alive. You put a lot of thought and effort into making sure that you chose the right spell, at the right time, all in an effort to make sure that your blue bar stays full enough to survive the encounter.

Now sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you need a little blue bar boost from your local alchemist. The kind that restores enough of your mana to push just a little bit further. Those alchemists can be tricksy folks – and are often found lurking amongst their herbs in the darker corners of Orgrimar and Stormwind. While they may look a tad frightening sitting there with their herbs, vials and distillers surrounding them, fear not, they are generally a gentile group of people. Just, uh, don’t drink in anything that you are freely offered and didn’t ask for! Heed this advice, because if you turn yourself into a toad don’t say that I didn’t warn you!

Anyhow, aside from the scariness of the alchemist in general, they do have a few brews that you will absolutely want to explore to assist you with your mana needs.

Potion of Concentration – the new version of the Dreamless Sleep potion, this potion has quickly become one of my favorite mana restoratives. It will allow you to regain 22,000 mana over a period of 10 seconds. But there is a kick, you cannot do anything for those 10 seconds if you want to get the full effect of the potion. Now, this will not be ideal for every encounter, however there are some raid encounters where it is absolutely perfect (Magmaw’s exposed head, for example).

Basically, anytime that you can get at least 5 seconds of this bad boy off, it is your best bet mana wise and will restore the most mana. Just be sure to communicate to your other healers that you are going to be out of commission for a few seconds so that they can cover any healing that may need to be done while you are “concentrating”. Should you need to break your concentration, don’t worry, all you have to do is cast and it will cancel the effect (damage taken does not seem to cancel it, from what I can tell). I have been using this as my mana potion anytime I can. Double the mana is absolutely worth trying to time using this potion.

This potion requires 2 Azshara’s Veil to craft.

Mythical Mana Potion – This is your typical stock mana potion. It will restore a constant amount of mana (~10,000). If you cannot slip in a potion of concentration (and believe me there will be times you just can’t), this would be your go to mana potion. Oddly enough, enemies no longer seem to drop these, and so the only way to obtain them is via crafting or the Auction House.

This potion requires 1 Cinderbloom and 2 Whiptail to craft.

Mysterious Potion – This potion is a little bit like playing Russian roulette with your mana pot. It can restore anywhere from 1 to 15,000 mana (and I’ve seen some reports of up to 20,000). And while the high end seems pretty great, the low end is pretty terrible. I’ve seen reports with mana returns as low as 4,300, which is pretty awful if you are really hurting for mana. Additionally, unlike its counterparts in the past two expansions, this potion no longer grants a random elixir effect, making it even less desirable. In short, I would not recommend this potion. The variance is just too great, and too unreliable.

This potion requires 2 Deepstone Oil to craft.

Migh ty Rejuvenation Potion – This potion will grant you 8,550 mana and health. And while this is less mana than both the Concentration and Mythical Mana potions, you should not discount the health return benefit to this potion. There may be times when you need that extra boost of health to survive. However, utilizing just a healing potion leaves your potion on cooldown, and provides you with zero mana benefit. As such, anytime that you find you need to chug a healing potion, I would recommend this guy here.

This potion requires 2 Whiptail to craft.

And there you have it! Gather up all of your flowers and vials and visit your, er, friendly alchemist today! Remember, tipping your alchemist may make them less likely to slip
something…unfortunate…into your potions ;)

Whiptail tends to be found near swamps and basins, particularly in Uldum or the murky areas of Tol Barad. I tend to find that there.

Azshara’s Veil has been easier for me to find, I find them in the more lower level zones and it can also be found in Tol Barad.

Thanks for posting this, Beru! I know I had been eyeing the PoC myself and I remember in the past, it was an all or nothing deal. If you broke your sleep during the timeframe, you got no mana back. It’s nice to see it’s more of a channeled effect and being interrupted will at least give you something back.

The mysterious potion’s minimum health/mana return is based on your alchemy skill. It boils down to 5-15k health and mana returned at 525 alchemy, or exactly the same average as a mythical mana potion, but with health restoration as well.

If you use it with a health deficit that you would eventually need to heal, it’s worth approximately 12k mana (I currently treat 10k life as about 2k mana) on average, or 6k mana at minimum.

It is a great cheap potion for running heroics
(you can fish up a stack in half an hour using pools in Deepholm), but yes I would generally want to be using concentration potions for raiding.

A very good point actually, i haven’t looked into pots yet to aid me on heroic runs, mainly because everything is so crazy expensive atm. This seems like a good alternative to other consumables though – on some fights I struggle to make use of my shadowfiend + Hymn effectively, and I’m pretty lost if that happens.

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